Future is bleak for the EU’s sprawling, creaking empire
LIKE some hellish pantomime without an end, the painful trade negotiations continue. More than four years since the British people voted for Brexit, the politicians still cannot agree the terms of our departure.
But for all their talk of “exhaustion” yesterday, too many of them are relishing this protracted drama, which feeds their sense of vanity. Every missed deadline is the cue for another spell in the limelight and another burst of meaningless rhetoric.
At the heart of this relentless cycle of bureaucratic paralysis lies the intransigence of the Brussels elite, which remains unreconciled to the referendum outcome and aims to punish us for daring to leave. One British Government source even said that the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the real leader of the EU, “is determined to make Britain crawl through broken glass”.
That hostility is partly driven by the EU’s fundamental disdain towards the idea of sovereignty. Stretching back to the 1950s, the whole point of the European project is to achieve political integration between the member states. “Ever closer union” is the ruling creed. National identities, democracies and economies all have to be sacrificed on the altar of this dogma.
JUST as the single currency is a vehicle for political unity rather than prosperity, so the obsession with freedom of movement is explained by determination to build a new concept of European citizenship, obliterating borders and traditional allegiances.
The same federalist mission also drives the quest to create a European army, extend the role of the European Court of Justice and set Europe- wide taxes. It is also why, today, the EU is being so stubborn about our rights to our own waters, competitive regulations and system of governance.
Yet, accompanying all this quasi- imperial grandeur, there is fear within the EU that Britain might flourish after Brexit. Freed from Brussels bureaucracy and able to forge our own destiny on the global stage, our nation could emerge as a powerful competitor, thereby exposing the folly of the federalist project.
The EU thinks the way to deal with this threat is to penalise Britain rather than abandon its failing and outdated ideology.
Its feelings of insecurity are justified. The attempts by Brussels to lay down the law cannot conceal the reality that the EU faces a grimmer future than independent Britain.
Almost insolvent, wracked by division, the EU is in permanent crisis. It may have worked when it had just six members, but today it is a sprawling, creaking empire.
Its inflexibility leaves it illequipped to meet the challenges of the 21st century – reflected in the fact that all the world’s fastest growing economies are outside Europe. The
EU is much keener on spending than on generating wealth. Europe accounts for 50 per cent of all the world’s expenditure on welfare, despite having just 7 per cent of its population.
This dependency culture has not only undermined enterprise, but has also worsened Europe’s chronic indebtedness. Another huge financial crisis, redolent of the Greek meltdown in 2009, looks inevitable.
ONLY last month the Italian government, with liabilities of 160 per cent of GDP, called on the European Central Bank to wipe out all state debts. That would be a recipe for the final collapse of the Eurozone’s credibility.
Just as dangerous is the mounting discord within the EU, especially between east and west. Predominantly Christian countries like Poland and Hungary, furious at the imposition of migrant quotas in the wake of Merkel’s decision to open the floodgates, are resisting Brussels’s imposition of the woke agenda on social issues like the family and diversity. As Oxford professor Mark Almond wrote, “People who led the struggle against the Kremlin’s domination in the Communist era are acutely sensitive to being bossed around by Brussels.”
The irony of the European project is that it was conceived after the war as a means of restraining Germany, but it is now a German- led entity. France’s President Macron might pose as the keeper of the federalist flame, but it is Chancellor Merkel who really dictates policy. Nor is it a coincidence that her defence minister Ursula von der Leyen was installed last year as the new EU President, despite an unimpressive record in office.
Ms von der Leyen has done nothing to contradict her image as a Teutonic mediocrity. Britain is better off out of this racket – and behind the hot air, the EU knows it.
‘ There is a fear within the EU that Britain might flourish alone’